


Cycle of Evil

by MoonSilverSprite



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV), Sinister (Movies)
Genre: Brainwashing, Dark Magic, Family, Ghosts, Horror, Kidnapping, Mystery, Police Procedural, Psychological Horror, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-10
Updated: 2019-08-30
Packaged: 2020-08-14 13:21:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 16,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20192959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MoonSilverSprite/pseuds/MoonSilverSprite
Summary: After the Collins' house is burnt, Zach and Clint are dead and Deputy So-and-so is missing, the BAU go to investigate the possible serial killer, based on evidence the deputy left behind. But when they find several reels, detailing all of the family murders in the last fifty years, the agents seem to be going intoodeep.While Bughuul plans to use the team, the imprisoned deputy tries to help them and the ghost children hinder the case, the BAU struggle to not only escape alive, but mentally intact...





	1. Chapter 1

Deputy So-and-so had no idea where Bughuul had transported him.

All he knew were that his insides felt as if they had turned upside down, been vomited out of him and flung back through his mouth. It still looked as if he was in his motel room, even though he knew it couldn’t be. The place had a darker, murky, miserable feel about it and the only furniture left were the chair and desk, now empty.

Standing behind him was Bughuul. The deputy felt the claws dig into him as it forced him with incredible strength to the chair, then pushed him down onto it. All of a sudden, large chains appeared around the deputy, securing him.

“What do you want?” he demanded the god, even though he knew there would not be an answer.

The sound of a projector started up and the deputy gazed at the desk in front of him. He recognized the Stevenson house and the family in the garden.

These were the reels Ellison had seen. The deputy tried to look away, but his body was fixed so that as long as the reel played, he could simply watch.

Thinking of Ellison, the deputy strained with all of his energy to open his mouth. He could say just one word.

“Ashley?”

Bughuul seemed to have noticed. Whether he cared or not was something else. The deputy doubted the god did, or had ever cared. But when the reel was complete, the paralysis left and the deputy could turn his head to the door.

Standing there was Ashley, wearing her pajamas. Bloodstained pajamas.

“Hello Deputy,” she said, as if this were quite normal, “It’s been three years since I saw you. You burnt my house down.”

“The cycle would continue,” he argued, “I had to stop them.”

Ashley turned slowly to her right and walked away. The deputy called after her, but Bughuul only reached into his mouth and grabbed the slippery tongue. The deputy found he could no longer speak, no matter how much he tried.

A telepathic message from Bughuul indicated the deputy could only talk again when he let him.

If Bughuul wanted to.

As Bughuul disappeared, another reel played. And the deputy had to look in horror as his friend Ellison was killed.

“We’ve got a possible serial killer in Illinois,” Garcia told the group through the screen at the BAU as they sat around the table awaiting a new case, “An officer from Pennsylvania went on leave three years ago and was last seen close to the attack.”

“And why do Illinois police think this was a serial killer?” Kate Callahan turned to Hotch, who was the only member of the team standing upright.

“Because from notes found with the missing officer,” Hotch explained, “He was under the impression that a serial killer murdered a family in his hometown four years ago. Then the new family who moved into the house were killed. The father was crime writer Ellison Oswalt.”

“I remember that,” Reid spoke up, intrigued, “Ellison Oswalt lived at the house in Pennsylvania for about a week in September 2012 with his wife and two kids. He was researching what happened to the Stevenson family who had died a year earlier.”

“And what happened to the Stevensons?” Kate wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

Garcia answered before Reid could, “Err, they – they were found hanged from the tree in their back garden. Except for ten-year-old Stephanie, who is currently missing.”

“And Oswalt?” JJ asked.

Reid fiddled with his pencil as he answered. It was bizarre how morbid subjects were such a curiosity to him, even if they weren’t working on a case.

“He – went to their previous house in New York State, which was still for sale. That night, Ellison, his wife and fourteen-year-old Trevor Oswalt were tied up and killed with an axe. The killer – used their blood – to – paint on the walls.” Reid trailed off, still fiddling with his pencil and looking down at his lap.

“I think I remember something like that,” Morgan frowned as he tried to think, “His daughter – what was her name?”

“Ashley,” Reid mumbled, “Seven years old. Still missing.”

There was a silence for a moment as the team considered what sort of person they were dealing with. This was broken by Hotch revealing some more information.

“Our Unsub or Unsubs have attacked twenty-five families in the United States over a period of fifty-three years,” Hotch faced his team, “He drugs and murders the family save for one child, whom he takes with him and is never seen again.”

“Fifty-three years?” JJ didn’t want to say this, but she was a little sceptical. “And it’s definitely the same guy?”

“The MO remains the same,” Hotch pressed a button and the first crime scene came up, showing five corpses lying on the floor of a church, “and it leads right back to here. This is from the first case, of the Reverend Jim Georgeson, his wife and his two teenage daughters, on October 8th 1962. Their son, Milo Georgeson, was aged eleven years old when he was kidnapped and has never been found.”

“And the recent murder?” JJ held her chin on her left knuckle as she took a better look.

The pictures changed to that of a crime scene in a cornfield. “Clint Collins was found murdered earlier today,” Hotch told the team, “his son Zach is missing. The farmhouse was burnt down. His ex-wife Courtney and his other son Dylan are currently in hospital. They refuse to say what happened and the boy, Dylan, is clearly traumatized. Wheels up in five.”

“How does our Unsub choose the families?” Morgan asked. The jet was currently somewhere over West Virginia and the files were out on the table. Reid, as usual, had picked his up first.

“There has only been one possible link, found in the deputy’s notes,” Hotch opened his file up, “In what we dubbed Line One, each family had previously lived in a house where the last murder occurred.”

Reid was immersed in reading what he found. “Line One,” he straightened the page out on the table and read aloud,” Starts in the summer of 1966 in Oregon. The Stringer family were found tied to chairs and drowned in their swimming pool, save for ten-year-old Kenneth, who has never been found.”

A shiver ran down Kate’s spine and she crossed her arms in a desperate attempt to hold herself together.

“Jonathan Martinez,” Reid said more to himself than his team, “aged nine, was abducted from his home in Sacramento after his parents and twin brother were locked in their car and set on fire in 1979.”

“Nine-year-old twins and using fire as a murder weapon,” JJ mumbled, “Could that be why the Unsub choose the Collins?”

“Possibly,” Reid murmured, “Our Unsub may wish to recreate future murders to give himself a thrill. The third massacre in Line One is the DeLuzio family in Orange County, California, in the spring of 1986. Eight-year-old Matilda was kidnapped and her parents and older sister were…run over with a lawnmower.” He felt his stomach churn. You’d have thought that ten years on the job would mean that nothing surprised the agent any more, but it did happen.

He flicked to the next murders. “Thirteen-year-old Christopher Miller was taken from his home in St. Louis in March 1998 after his parents and younger brother were tied to their beds and their throats cut.” At least this one wasn’t over-the-top.

“Line One ends with this disappearance,” he tapped the picture of Stephanie Stevenson, “ten-year-old Stephanie was reported missing in Pennsylvania in 2011 after her family were murdered. Author Ellison Oswalt moved in the following year, but didn’t stay very long. When he went back to his old house in New York State, he, his wife and his son were killed that night and his daughter Ashley, then seven, was abducted.”

“The Deputy on Stephanie’s case took a leave of absence,” Rossi spoke up, “Traveled the country for three years, made the case file. Then he vanishes after the Collins’ murders.”

“Do you think he’s a victim of our Unsub? It would be tying up loose ends.”

Rossi sat back, twisting his hands. “But the question is; how did our Unsub find the detective?”

“It’s possible that the deputy knew more than his notes suggest,” Reid frowned as he weighed the possibility in his mind, “Maybe he was an accomplice.”

“Well until we’ve found him, we should treat him as an abduction victim.” Hotch reminded his team.

Reid had the dates for Line Two written out on another page. This was a difficult one and not just emotionally. He quit flicking between the page and the bulging notes in the folder in front of them.

Milo Georgeson was the first, a black-and-white unsmiling face. Emma Keighley was the oldest of any of the children involved, at fourteen, taken on Christmas Day 1976 from her home in Wisconsin. The next massacre was only the following year, in Florida. Ted Radcliff was eleven when his family were killed by alligators.

Then Catherine Anne London, a dentist’s daughter from Minnesota. The eight-year-old was taken in 1985; her family strapped to dentist’s chairs and drilled through the mouth. The screams must have been unbearable, Reid thought.

Peter Thomas was the last of Line Two before the Collins. His family were found electrocuted in their house days before Thanksgiving 1997, also up in Wisconsin. The nine-year-old had been taken from the scene and his family’s corpses left over the Thanksgiving weekend.

Ashley sat on the chair at the back as she surveyed this group. They were adults and all connected by bond rather than blood, but they could be a family all the same. Not by any of Bughuul’s rules, however, but the love they had was strong, she could see that.

The old man lived alone and the woman with black hair had a girl that was too old, she knew that much. She had read their files when the blonde busybody had been reading hers on the computer. Funny really, Ashley thought to herself.

The stern, tall man that had told the team of the case was a father and the blonde woman a mother. If one of the two would bring their work home, Ashley could see how either of the sons might be tricked.

Bughuul appeared beside Ashley as she looked up at him, managing a smile.

“Have I done well?” she asked him.

Bughuul did not speak. He could not, had not for thousands of years. But he could communicate telepathically with his children. Ashley had indeed done a good job.

Bughuul glanced at the team. Humans, with bodies to hurt and pierce and drain until their souls left at last. These law enforcers were no different. He would not be able to take all of their homes, but he would strike where it would hurt.

Each of them seemed to have their own talent. It was a pity they were no longer children. Bughuul liked talent in a young body. Ashley’s drawings, Gerta’s music, Christopher’s intelligent mind, they all helped to conjure up new ideas and opportunities to kill and wreck mayhem.

Ashley looked back over at them as Bughuul placed his hand on her shoulder and she pointed out each of their talents.

The old man was a writer. A crime writer, like Daddy had been. The bald, black man was very athletic. The skinniest and youngest of the team, only slightly older than the children Bughuul took it seemed, had a mind that Ashley thought resembled a labyrinth with scribbles all over the walls. The busybody was not here, but she had fingers that moved like lightning

As Bughuul descended back into his world, he took a look at the room – for lack of a better word – that held the deputy.

The deputy was worn out, physically and emotionally, from being forced to watch the reels over and over. He could barely see anything in front of him anymore, but when the air – again, for lack of a better word – went cold around him, he knew Bughuul was near.

“What do you want?” he asked in a quivering voice, before Bughuul placed one finger on the deputy’s right eye.

The deputy could see the plane filled with agents. Bughuul didn’t have to say anything, but the deputy knew what he meant all the same.

That if these agents died, it was his fault.


	2. Chapter 2

The team arrived at the burnt farmhouse at noon. Morgan, Rossi and Kate were looking about the crime scene with a local officer. Apparently Clint Collins was found burnt alive after his wife called emergency services. She and her son had been terrorized, apparently by ghosts.

Rossi stood in the doorway of the house. It seemed as if some parts had survived the wreckage. He could see what had been a couch and a gramophone sitting by the door. He wondered how the fire had started. According to Reid and JJ at the hospital, Dylan hadn’t said a word. All Courtney asked about was the deputy.

He couldn’t see it, but Bughuul was standing in the doorway. The deity stared at the old man, considering his options. Where to place the 8mm films. Which agent to watch them.

Which child to use.

JJ left the hospital, talking on the phone to Rossi. “According to Hotch and Reid, Courtney didn’t say a word. She looked away and kept crying.”

“Any luck with Dylan?” Rossi asked her.

JJ sighed. Dylan had been a challenge.

As a woman and a mother, the team had thought it easier if she had interviewed Dylan alone. The boy had sat on his hospital bed, his legs curled up by his chest.

The agent asked him if he wanted to talk about what had happened. All she heard was ‘Bughuul killed Zach’.

“Bughuul? Who’s that?” JJ had questioned.

Dylan then murmured, “Milo made me watch the films. Then Zach watched them. And Zach killed Dad.”

JJ wanted to ask a whole heap of questions, but the one she eventually did was, “Milo?”

“Milo. His family were killed at the church.” JJ remembered the case from 1962.

“Milo – he used to live at your house, didn’t he?” she asked, easing herself down onto the bed in front of him.

Dylan nodded. “A long time ago.”

So, if Dylan was telling the truth and he had been certain of what he saw, Milo had been alive, fifty years later. Where had he been?

Dylan glanced at the file in JJ’s hand. Desperate to know if there were any of the drawings inside, he grabbed it and tore through the papers frantically. JJ had been about to tell him off when Dylan stared at a photo. His eyes widened and he turned it about.

“That’s Milo. That’s Milo when I saw him. But he was more decayed.” Then Dylan had looked at JJ with desperate, sad eyes. “Bughuul took the children. Every child. He’s a Babylonian god. Don’t watch his reels.”

JJ repeated all this to Rossi, confused.

“What did he saw he was looking for?” Rossi paced up and down on the grass outside the wreckage.

“Drawings. Asked if I’d seen any bizarre drawings.”

“He recognised the boy from a photo from over fifty years ago?” Rossi asked in disbelief.

JJ sighed. “He said it was the boy who’d spoken to him. That was all I could work out.”

“The ritual-like aspect of the murders, the church murder, strange drawings, a Babylonian god?” Rossi asked, “It sounds like a cult took the children. Probably kept them. The kid Dylan saw could have been Milo’s son, maybe his grandson.”

“So this could be a group?” JJ offered.

“It could be, but I won’t say for sure,” Rossi stopped walking and stood by the police vehicle, “Might explain why two murders fifty years apart look similar. Talk to Reid. The kid might have some ideas.”

He ended the call and sat in the car. He didn’t see, but four boxes of 8mm reels were laid on the back seat.

The deputy had worked out that there were other people held in Bughuul’s world besides himself and the children.

When a reel titled _Pottery Class ’78_ had finished, where a family were locked in a kiln by six-year-old Mary Ann Foster, the deputy heard intense screaming. Looking over his right shoulder to where the screaming came from, he squinted and saw that that part of the room was different.

The walls were made of wooden panelling and the desk and chair looked around five hundred years old. At least, it resembled the sort of furniture the deputy had seen in movies set about that time. The man sitting at the desk was physically in his late thirties, clean-shaven and wearing nightclothes from his own time.

The deputy called out, “Hey! You – you all right?”

The man just about seemed to notice the deputy, turning around and shouting loudly, “_Das Feuer! Mein Gott, das Feuer!_”

The deputy then asked, slightly surprised, “OK, I understand – you might not know any English...buddy. But you – you need to try and – stay calm, all right?”

Then the deputy asked him, “I – don’t know very much – German, is it?” He then tried, “Dein Name ist?”

The man swallowed and then, his voice shaking, answered the deputy. “_Detlef._”

“Detlef, is that your name?” the deputy asked. The man nodded. Then he looked at whatever he was seeing on the desk. It seemed to resemble parchment.

“_Hinrich – seine Familie –_“ The man’s strangled sobs echoed around.

The deputy tried asking, “Hinrich – is he the child that you tried to save? Did Bughuul take him?”

At the mention of Bughuul’s name, Detlef began struggling on his seat, yelling at the top of his lungs, “_Beelzebub!_”

The deputy didn’t need to know German to understand what Detlef said.

Upon finding the reels in the back seat, Rossi had taken them inside. “Hey, kid,” he had called, walking into the evidence locker as Reid skimmed through a 1962 article, “know how to set up a projector?”

“Possibly,” Reid had answered him, “Why?”

“I think I might have something. I found these reels – at the crime scene. The dates on some appear to correspond with ‘Line One’.”

“I’ll try, if I can find a projector.” Reid had stood up as Rossi placed the cardboard box on the table.

“Don’t bother. There was one in there.” Rossi had shown him the projector.

Reid had paused and asked him, “Where exactly was this?”

Rossi didn’t want to say he had found it in the back of the car. He presumed that the officer with him had found it in the church. The officer denied this, of course, but as his order had been to examine the burnt-out farmhouse, Rossi guessed that the officer didn’t want to be reported for disobedience.

Setting the projector up, Reid slotted in _Family Hanging Out ’11_ and stood back, ready to mentally take notes. Rossi already had a notebook out.

The film seemed to go reasonably well. Reid wondered aloud how the Unsub could have gotten so close. He doubted there had been a zoom button on a projector suited to use 8mm reels.

Then the horror had begun.

Seeing the four victims struggling as they were hanged was enough to make the hardened agents queasy.

“What the –“ Rossi found himself stammering as the scene unfolded. When the tape ended, Rossi looked back at the box and again at the titles.

“_Pool Party_, _BBQ_…” he flicked back through the notebook, “In the deputy’s notes, the first family were drowned in their pool.”

“And the Martinez family were burnt alive in their station wagon.” Reid finished for him, staring down at the reels.

“I think we need to get Garcia on this,” Rossi had paled, “We need to get these straight to her. I don’t think I can watch these.”

Reid looked inside the second section. “These don’t have dates.”

“Well I can guess _Sunday Service_ features the Georgeson massacre,” Rossi walked out of the door to talk to the other officers about sending the reels to Quantico, “Try to match them with the murders at any rate.”

Reid peeked inside the fourth box. _Quarry Digging, NC ’72_; _Steam Bath WY ’80_; _Bungee Jumping, ID ’88_; _Ski Trip, CO ’91_; _Road Trip, OK ’02_; _Target Practice, AZ ’07_. The young agent had wondered if he would ever be able to watch home movies again. Not that he had any at home, though. There had never been any time.

Inside Bughuul’s realm, Milo looked at the other children from the farmhouse. All of them had been a little afraid of Bughuul to attempt to interact outside of their ‘room’, but they had gotten bored all the same.

It was odd how even with the passage of time working differently in Bughuul’s realm, plus the fact that they were ghosts meant that their human emotions had been somewhat muted, the group could become bored. Perhaps it was because they had spent too long in the human world attempting to get Dylan to be one of them.

Emma had pottered into a ‘room’ that was barely used, aside from making the green juice. Milo watched as she looked at the endless vials and jars along a medieval table. This room had belonged to the German, Detlef the alchemist, before Bughuul took him prisoner. Milo remembered asking Bughuul this question.

Before then, families were often knocked out with wine. But when Bughuul had taken Detlef, the man who tried to burn down houses and destroy the parchments with the drawings on, the god took a liking to Detlef’s large alchemy collection.

It was one of the reasons Detlef was still relatively aware of where he was. Bughuul needed this man’s mind as much as the souls the god consumed.

“What are you doing?” Milo asked Emma.

“Oh, not much,” she gave out a mumble, “I just wanted time alone.”

Milo looked at the book Emma had been reading. The handwriting was an untidy scrawl and it was in Old German, but one of the perks about Bughuul’s realm was there were no language barriers. At least, for any of the children. Milo had seen the book when he was taught to make the green juice. There were recipes here for making something glow in the dark, to change color or even speak to the dead, in the usual way rather than anything Bughuul constructed. There had even been a minor mind-control spell, one which needed music to work.

“What exactly are you doing?” Milo asked again, standing by Emma as she took a red vial in her cold hands.

“You heard Ashley,” Emma answered without looking at Milo, “The agents have good minds, strong talents. Let’s see if it works.”

In the police station, Reid had looked at the deputy’s notes on ‘Line Four’. He wondered how exactly these Unsubs – since it had to be more than one – had been doing this for so long.

The page for ‘Line Four’ had six different cases. All had been linked to known murders.

_Quarry Digging_ featured a family being crushed by rocks in a quarry. Rescue workers had spent two days rescuing the family, only to find the ten-year-old son was missing.

_Steam Bath_ was a rather nasty piece featuring Yellowstone National Park. Reid remembered the geysers and reminded himself that he was never going there again if he could. The eight-year-old son was still missing, despite a massive search of surrounding land.

_Bungee Jumping_ had another hanging, this time on an outdoor course. This one had been written off as an accident, mainly due to a landslide that had happened the day before, with the eight-year-old daughter listed as ‘lost/injured’. Except that if the Unsub had abducted the girl, that had meant almost thirty years of clues had been missed.

_Ski Trip_ had been in Aspen. Reid frowned to himself in concentration when he read the details. He remembered this case. The mom, dad and two older sisters were found tied to sleds and pushed down the mountain over a hazardous area that was closed after a rock fall. The seven-year-old girl was missing.

_Road Trip_ hadn’t actually been a road trip, but did include a gas station and diner, owned by the victims. The mother, father, grandfather and older son had been tied to a propane tank and set alight. The eleven-year-old daughter was found missing from the scene.

_Target Practice_ was one that Reid also remembered. He recalled reading about it, when it had been the top headline in Arizona. A mother, father and their two teenage children were found shot to death by arrows at a clay pigeon exercise. Their youngest, a five-year-old boy, was missing.

Hotch entered the room as he saw his youngest team member close the file, hand grabbing at his hair.

“Garcia’s been sent the videos,” Hotch told Reid, “Took a long time to upload them onto the computer. You all right?”

Reid was staring at the notes, as if trying to work out an answer hidden within. “There’s something we missed, but I can’t work out what.”

“We’ll do our best,” Hotch reassured him, “if the Unsub’s MO is anything to work on, he can’t be far. We’re giving the profile in twenty minutes.”

Reid thanked him, then looked over a drawing that the deputy had scrawled on one page. He wasn’t sure what it was, but he thought the team could keep this to themselves for the time being.

In hindsight, that would have saved a lot of people from pain.


	3. Chapter 3

Standing in the main room of the station, in front of a board filled with notes and details of both the crime scenes in ‘Line Two’, the team were detailing what they knew to police. Unseen, some of Bughuul’s children sat on tables at the back, getting a proper view.

Christopher, Emma, Milo, Catherine, Stephanie and Ashley were watching, eager to please their father. They were all too happy to know about the team that had poked their noses in.

“We believe the Unsub is the leader of a cult or a select religious few,” Hotch started off, “We estimate his age to be at the very least about seventy-one years old, but more likely somewhere between seventy and eighty. He committed the 1962 massacre, but is still physically competent enough to kill Clint Collins or at least influence someone to.”

“He is likely a loner,” Morgan carried on, “He takes pleasure in his kills and is knowledgeable concerning both drugs and the physical body. He possibly may have been a chemist or a doctor in 1962. His ideal victim, from the missing persons reports we have gathered from the missing deputy’s files, is a child between the ages of five and fourteen, although mainly between seven and eleven years old.”

“Although we say ‘he’,” JJ reeled the information to the officers, “since no sex acts took place, we cannot rule out a female, although the amount of strength used to move bodies suggests a male, perhaps more than one. From what we have learnt from the evidence left behind, our Unsub has had families tied to chairs and drowned, strapped to sleds and pushed down mountains, hung from trees and placed on platforms in lieu of clay pigeons and shot at. This was all while victims were drugged, so it would take several people to carry this out.”

“He may have been a hermit since the 1960s,” Reid chimed in, “but can be trusted enough to come close to families without suspicion. He could simply be a master of disguise or someone a family would trust. As we suspect he is a cult leader, in the vein of Manson in that he gets followers to kill for him, particularly in old age, he could be a priest or posing as one. We also believe that he took Milo Georgeson as his captive and has been brainwashing the boy and very likely numerous other children, over the decades since.”

“If we happen to be dealing with numerous Unsubs in a cult, then we must come to terms with the unfortunate likelihood that the children that were taken over the decades have been brainwashed into committing murders.” Kate finished, “They may have seen him as a father figure and a form of Stockholm Syndrome. It is possible that after each massacre, he lives nearby to see who will move into the house, then attack when they have moved somewhere else. Again, this does suggest someone who is able to hide their true personality, as well as a large enough place to hold captives when still living in the local area.”

Milo was leaning on his knuckles, bored. “So close and yet still so far,” he muttered.

Ashley looked up at Christopher and Emma. Emma was whispering something into Christopher’s ear and then gave out a small giggle. He rolled his eyes but a small smile grew on his face all the same.

Confused, the girl asked, “What were you doing?”

Stephanie slapped a hand to her face with frustration. “Christopher did that when I moved in,” she informed Ashley, “He once made eyes at my sister. That was before Matilda slapped him back to focusing on showing me films.”

Ashley got off from the table, went in front of Christopher and crossed her arms, scowling. “Which one?” she asked.

When the team were alone, Hotch put his phone on speaker and asked Garcia, “Find anything?”

“I feel as if I want to spend the rest of my life in a pink padded cell,” Garcia groaned loudly, “and I am never going to look at a lawnmower again.”

“Did you manage to see anything useful?” Kate asked her.

“I did identify the symbol in the video,” Garcia told her team, “It was from a Professor Jonas. He disappeared just after the Oswalt homicide. Ellison Oswalt had asked him about a Babylonian deity named Bughuul.”

“What exactly is Bughuul a deity of?” Morgan asked.

“Ask and you shall receive,” Garcia replied, “He was the brother of Moloch, a Canaanite god. But since Moloch was furious about his brother copying his worship and child sacrifices, so he sealed his mouth with ash for eternity.”

“The deputy’s notes mentioned a man named Stromberg,” Reid glanced about his team, “But when his house was searched, he was murdered. And his daughter disappeared.”

JJ looked over her shoulder, startled. She had felt someone pulling on the ends of her hair and flicked them around playfully.

“JJ? You all right?” Morgan asked her.

The agent turned back, lost for words. Finally she nodded. “Yeah, yeah, I’m OK.” Then she coughed, standing up straight, arms still crossed. “I think some of us should head back to the crime scene. The rest of us should have a look over the evidence left behind.”

“There was a ham radio in the deputy’s motel room,” Reid pointed out, “But I don’t know how to turn it on. I mean, I _know_ how to turn one on, but this one doesn’t appear to work.”

“And Garcia,” Hotch spoke up, “you need to see if you can find any more homicides that use this symbol. Or anything on Professor Jonas or Stromberg.”

“Will do.” Garcia answered, ending the call.

Meanwhile, in Bughuul’s realm, the deputy was forced to look through a stone slab. One of Bughuul’s earliest murders, of a boy in ancient Babylon using a priest’s knife to kill his loved ones. The deputy wondered where the boy’s soul was now. Was it just the American children who appeared in America? He knew that the Georgeson family and Stringer family had lived in America their whole lives, but their first houses had originally been owned by people in Holland and England.

Then again, it had been over four thousand years. The boy’s soul could be gone.

As the deputy heard children’s voices passing by his door, he looked towards it once the slab had finished taunting him. Emma walked past, holding the vial, with Christopher directly behind her. Milo slowed to a stop outside the deputy’s room, before he turned his face to look right at the man.

“What are they doing?” the deputy questioned.

If Milo could utter a sigh of irritation, he would have done so at that very moment. “I don’t want them to be punished by Mr Boogie,” the boy blandly explained as he entered, placing a hand on the chains holding the deputy, “Try to stop them.”

As the chains slipped away, the deputy wondered if he had gone mad from being in here. Had Milo really said that? Then the boy’s eyes became sunken and dark and the deputy knew for certain. Managing to scramble to his feet, he saw the two ghosts had entered the church, placing a gramophone on the floor.

In the church, Reid was sitting down near the altar as he leafed through the file on the deputy.

“It says here that he spent hours working on the Stephanie Stevenson case after she vanished. He didn’t personally know the family but he did interview several known sex offenders in the area by himself.”

“If nothing else, he’s dedicated,” JJ agreed as she crouched down next to him, “I just don’t know how someone aged seventy, eighty-odd years old can carry on this spree.”

Reid was about to say that it depended on the Unsub’s physical stature or he possibly had accomplices, when he heard faint music coming from by the door.

“You hear that?” he asked, standing up and taking the gun from his holster. JJ followed suit and came out behind Reid.

Whatever they were expecting, it was certainly not two children sitting down on the floor as a gramophone next to them.

JJ was about to ask who the children were when they stood up. The boy in the white pyjamas went over to her and took her right hand in his left, managing his best to smile up at her. It had been a long time since Christopher had cracked a smile. Emma took Reid’s left hand in her right, as he began to wonder why she was dressed for a winter’s day when it was clearly July.

As soon as the ghostly hands touched the agents’, Reid and JJ felt somehow at ease, calmer than they had been in a very long time. JJ felt like a child again, while Reid suddenly felt like the child he had never been. Letting the two ghosts lead them out, eyes fixed on them, the two agents were as light as feathers, without a care in the world.

The four of them were walking towards the cornfield when Rossi looked around while on the phone to the hospital. “Call you back,” he gabbled, before he called out to JJ and Reid, “Hey! Where are you going?”

His dazed agents carried on, walking at a steadier pace. JJ looked back over her shoulder, but Christopher told her, his voice barely more than a whisper, “Don’t. Ignore him.”

JJ did so, but in the split second of awareness, she let her gun slip from her hand and drop into the grass. Rossi followed, calling after them, but as he did so, he heard a strained, desperate voice in his ear.

“Go to the church. Turn off the gramophone.”

_Gramophone?_ Rossi wondered, but then he heard it again, more urgently this time.

In the cornfield, walking closer and closer to the centre, JJ and Reid were filled with longing as the teenage ghosts looked back at them. When she saw Christopher snigger, JJ felt something that she hadn’t since high school. Reid looked at Emma and thought of Maeve, of how much he loved her.

The strong emotion from the eldest children was seeping into the younger two agents.

At the clearing, the ghosts stopped walking. Christopher put JJ’s hand on his hip and one around his back. Emma followed suit with Reid. Then the ghosts started to slowly dance. The agents were too entranced to fight.

“Be with me.” JJ heard Christopher whisper into her chest.

Emma leaned against Reid as they turned. “We’ll be young forever.”

“How?” JJ managed to ask. 

“Take a step into Mr Boogie’s world,” Emma explained, “You’ll never die. We’ll be together for eternity.”

As the surrounding sky started to go black and the field resembled night-time, the two couples still danced. Then JJ looked up for a second and saw a snarling face looking directly at them. Every instinct inside her was telling her to back away, to shoot, to get away from this nightmarish being, but the music still rang in her ears and she could only sway as she held Christopher. 

Then it stopped. 

It was day again, the ghosts and Bughuul had gone and Reid and JJ were suddenly wide awake in a field of corn. 

“Was…was I on drugs again?” Reid managed to ask, staring at his hands where the ghost girl had stood a moment ago. 

“If you were, I was too,” JJ looked about her, “Those kids…” 

They walked out in silence to the edge of the cornfield. Rossi was coming out of the church. 

“What were you guys doing?” he asked, his face flustered, “You started walking off into the corn and ignoring me.” 

“Did you see two kids with us?” JJ wanted to know if she had actually been hallucinating. “Girl and a boy, about fourteen years of age?” 

Rossi shook his head. “Your hands were out, though,” he told them, “Like someone was leading you.” 

Reid swallowed. “I think we need to talk to Courtney and her son again.” He managed to say before he felt his stomach do a somersault. 

The deputy fell back into Bughuul's realm, exhausted, crashing onto the floor. He heard Emma and Christopher running past the door. As the deputy looked up, he saw Ashley standing limply as she looked up at Milo beside her, who was murmuring, "I knew we should never have let teenagers in." 

He didn't know how much later after that he fell asleep, but the deputy found himself yet again chained to the chair. Ashley was frowning down at him. "You should not have done that, deputy." she snarled. 

The deputy leaned forward as far as he could, before there was a faint scream from behind the deputy. Ashley didn't flinch. 

"Ashley, there's got to be some part of you in there. The little girl who loved her daddy. And her mommy and her brother. Please tell me there is." he sighed desperately. 

"No," Ashley firmed replied, "Maybe a little more time seeing what happens to people who anger Mr Boogie will stop you from trying to help the officers." She turned on her heel and started to leave the room, before she stopped at the door frame. Without turning back, she told him, "You can never leave alive, deputy. When Mr Boogie took you, your soul began to decay, as it has with us. There's only one way out; if we manage to go beyond Bughuul's realm and into paradise. But as we became bad, I honestly don't know if that will happen." She started to leave and the deputy heard screaming again. 

The deputy had scarcely seen the other prisoners in the other realm. People like himself who had tried stopping Bughuul at some point in history. They were in other ‘rooms’ as he had come to call them and didn’t move from the chairs they were sat on. 

He wasn’t entirely sure how many were here. They all watched the horrific murders as well, that he knew. But sometimes he would glimpse them, tied down onto their chairs, crying out in their mother tongue. 

The deputy wondered how many of them thought they were in Hell. Maybe this was Hell. 

The one he saw the most was the German, but he saw many more, often much older than the alchemist. 

He thought the first adult to have been transported here was a tanned man wearing only a loincloth, whose room appeared to resemble sun-baked mud. He reminded the deputy of Ancient Egypt, although he supposed the man must be Mesopotamian. The man was held down by flimsy rope, which looped around his chair and through holes drilled in his wall, often shaking and making agonizing noises. 

However, this man kept repeating the same word. 

_“Zirat-banit?”_

The deputy hadn’t understood, but when he saw Ashley stand by the man when she came back and placed one of her father’s books on the deputy's table, the Mesopotamian had grabbed her as she had passed his chair and looked into her eyes, asking that word. He asked quite a few of the girls who came by the room that word as well. 

Zirat-banit must have been the girl he had tried to save when he was dragged here. The Mesopotamian must have lost his mind several centuries ago. According to Milo, the man was here because he tried to stop priests from painting Bughuul’s image onto jars. The jars which had been left all over the Middle East and later stolen by Templar Knights, making their way into Europe. Bughuul had let the man live to watch his failure. 

Some of the prisoners managed to speak English. Well, as best as they could, after being trapped for who knew how long, screaming and going mad. The oldest chronologically was in Puritan clothing, being made to stare at a parchment in front of him as he was chained to a chair. He kept screaming, “Where is Patience? Where is my goddaughter?” 

The deputy found out how Patience’s family were killed when Bughuul had snatched up the parchment from the shrieking man and placed it on the deputy’s desk. Patience’s family were dragged behind horses in 1648. Her godfather had burnt Patience’s house down as he believed it was haunted. It was this line that had eventually led to the Stringer murders. 

The deputy wondered why Bughuul had let him live, or at least suffer in here. The god fed off children’s souls. He had no need for terrified adults. 

Then the deputy realized. Bughuul didn’t _need_ to torture his adult prisoners. He _wanted_ to. 

And now with the agents finding all of the family murders, it was only a matter of time before the parental agents took their work home. 

The deputy had managed to help the agents that were being seduced by Emma and Christopher. He concentrated, closing his eyes and thinking of the field outside the farmhouse. He didn’t know how the children did it, but the veil between the worlds was thin due to their repeated visits, both when the Collins had lived there and now. As the deputy started to visualize a squad car with the female agent inside, he knew that he had a chance of warning them. 

Maybe the agents could abandon obvious answers and looks for unicorns, rather than horses or zebras. 

After all, as bizarre as it was, this situation called for the words of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; ‘Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’ 

And there was certainly emphasis on the ‘improbable’. 

As JJ sat in the car a few hours after the encounter, she found her eyes flickering to the mirror, although she really didn’t know why. Staring, she could see a line of children standing by the back of the car. Five children, made up of two girls and three boys. All of whom put their fingers to their lips in unison. 

JJ opened the door and turned her head as she started to get out, but found the children were gone. Looking around, heart beating in her throat, JJ wondered if perhaps the stress was making her see things. 

But as she shut the door, she saw a man standing by the hood. Embarrassed to let out a small scream, JJ was about to grab her gun when she took a closer look. She swore that it was the missing deputy. He looked absolutely terrible. His eyes were dark and hollow, his skin was grey like a fish and he seemed half-starved, despite the fact he had only been gone maybe two days. 

His lips started moving, but she couldn’t work out what he was saying. She put a hand to her ear, saying, “Sorry, I can’t…” but even when she wound the window down, she couldn’t hear him. 

When he tried to talk, she only heard strangled screaming. Then he kept saying the same words over and over again. 

JJ shook her head, hundreds of questions running through her head. But then, right before her eyes, the deputy seemed to fade. He placed a cold, lifeless hand by her heart and she could hear two words as he left her realm. 

“Burn reels.”


	4. Chapter 4

“You were seduced by teenage ghosts?” Garcia asked, completely taken aback.

JJ anxiously pulled hair behind her ear as she tried not to think about it. She had stood in the storeroom at the police station so she could call Garcia without anyone overhearing. If anyone found out about what happened to her and Reid, they’d have to go for psych evaluations. “The boy – he was wearing pajamas. The girl had winter clothes. But I swear I saw the kids’ faces before.”

Garcia tapped away at her keyboard. “Yes. Seems to fit. Aside from the ghost part, obviously.” She took a deep breath. “The descriptions match Christopher Miller and Emma Keighley. It isn’t known what clothing they were wearing when they were taken, but Christopher’s white pajamas were gone.”

JJ asked, “By some – _possibility_ that these are ghosts, why would they suddenly lure me and Reid out to the cornfield? None of the other cases had anything like this.”

Garcia felt herself blush as an idea came to mind. “You said that there was dance music, right?”

“Yeah, from the gramophone.” JJ answered.

“Well,” Garcia squirmed in her chair, “Since the children vanished when they were fourteen and thirteen – and have been that age ever since – it’s possible that they were on the onset of puberty when they became…ghosts.”

JJ nearly found herself laughing from how absurd this was. She didn’t know what was more bizarre; the fact that ghosts existed and they were hormonal sirens, or that this was the closest Reid had ever gotten to a date.

“Garcia, have you watched those 8mm film reels yet?” she asked, trying her best not to think about how a thirteen-year-old possibly dead boy had cast a spell on her.

“Just finished watching the set dubbed ‘Line Two’,” Garcia sighed, “and let me tell you, I am not looking forward to the rest.”

“Keep at it, Garcia,” JJ persuaded her, “Bye.”

As JJ hung up, Garcia looked down at the files that had been sent over. She held a glass of cherry cola in her hand, hoping that it could help her through watching this nightmare. She clicked up the first reel of ‘Line Three’. There were six reels in ‘Line Four’, the earliest dating from 1969. Watching _Ballet Class ’69_ she felt a lump in her throat.

The scene began inside of a ballet studio. A man was playing the piano, a woman in a costume was dancing and three children between the ages of eight and fourteen were copying her. Then it showed the family sitting down at a table as they drank cups of green juice.

The scene changed to night time. The man, woman and the older two children had been tied to the wall-length mirror. Piano wire had been removed and was loosely holding up the mirror. Then the wire was cut and the mirror knocked the four to the ground. Someone picked up shards and walked over the just-moving bodies.

Garcia wanted to look away, but found she couldn’t. That was one of the worst parts of being in the BAU.

Once the video finished, she looked down at the notes left by the deputy.

_Marcia Draper – 8 – Killeen, TX, 1969_  
_Family killed in father’s ballet studio_  
_House already demolished_

Garcia looked at the file collections. The other three reels had names that were just as innocent-sounding but instead of brightly-wrapped gifts, Garcia was sure she would find rattlesnakes and broken glass. Maybe literally.

The following five reels were titled _Pottery Class ’78_, _Happy Birthday ’84_, _Swimming Pool ’89_, _Ice Skating ’96_ and _Nature Trip ’14_.

Garcia groaned. She was going to need a lot of alcohol. And she didn’t even like alcohol.

Detlef was struggling in his seat as he was made to see the parchment of another murder. The new man hadn’t been as crazy as the others. Not like the Mesopotamian, the Englishman or someone who had been one of the Knights Templar’s servants.

When Detlef had been alive, he had considered himself a righteous man. From a relatively wealthy family, Detlef had the opportunity to chose; the monastery or become apprentice to an alchemist. Detlef took the life of an alchemist, a learned man, one who tried to figure out the mysteries around them.

But if it was anything like the world he found himself in, Detlef would have frankly preferred the life of a monk.

He had failed to save Hinrich, the little boy who had slaughtered his family on the farm. When the farm was taken over by a few other peasants, Detlef found himself looking at the pictures left behind. He matched up the parchment with pictures on the pottery found by Knights Templar.

Then that – _monster_ – took him into this realm.

Detlef’s brain had been picked for his knowledge and his talents. He had seen child after child working in the room, creating the green juice. And now more children were coming than ever before. In the past, families could keep a house for decades or centuries, whether peasant or lord. But now families could be nomadic, go all over the world.

Detlef was forced to watch the murders again and again, on stone slab or painted on pottery or drawn on parchment or paper or recorded sound or images. It was horrendous to be part of this, but he wondered if he would ever leave. It tormented him so to see the children having been bewitched by the devil.

But he saw the new man free from his bonds, reading a book at his desk. The new man did not speak German, but he was kind enough, as well as sane enough to register where he had ended up.

Detlef pushed himself up in the chair and called out to the name he had heard the children call the new man.

“Deputy?”

The new man looked up and gave a forced smile back at him. Then Detlef glanced towards the door. He had seen the new man look longingly out of there often. As much as Detlef could work out, that was the church where the boy Milo had lived.

The new man had managed to flicker as he had left the realm and followed children out to the farm. The new man had attempted to warn a female constable before he was pulled back into this realm. Then he had leaned onto the desk, head in his hands.

Detlef wished he could do something. But even if he was freed from the chair he had been held over the last five centuries, how could he help the new man or the constables?

At the station, Morgan, Kate and Rossi were sitting around a table. Reid had brought the reels in, mumbled something about needing the bathroom and briskly walked out before any of them could say anything. Rossi wondered if it was due to whatever had made him and JJ go loopy.

“Garcia, what you got?” Morgan asked as he placed the phone on speaker.

“Did you know that Adam Van Dyke’s family were reported missing together?” she asked in a tired, dulcet tone, “They disappeared in December 1996 at Lake Colby in New York and the family were found when the lake thawed in the spring. Mom, Dad, big brothers, all tied to rocks and thrown into a hole by the edge, right where the car was found. Adam was just ten…”

“Baby girl?” Morgan asked, concerned.

Garcia gave a heavy sigh. “Sorry my chocolate Adonis; this is really pushing me. Unsubs torturing and murdering victims is one thing. Doing this to whole families is another. Doing this and capturing it on film is probably the most disgusting and inhuman case I have had the displeasure to watch.”

“Have you found anything on the pictures in the Collins house?” Morgan asked her.

“Not yet,” she groaned, “The best I could find was a paper by a Professor Jonas who disappeared not long after the Oswalt homicide. There was something about a Babylonian god who was appeased by child sacrifices. He could come from his realm by the use of images, music or literature. Probably because of this superstition, the images are very hard to come by. I believe the image in Professor Jonas' possession was the only one in America, possibly the English-speaking world. I did find one interesting thing, though.”

She looked at the screen, where an archaeological find was being reported. “Stromberg had been present at an excavation in northern Germany a month before the Collins homicide. He found a piece of wood with the symbol drawn on in blood. According to the town records, a family were murdered on their farm in the 1530s. The parents, grandparents, three children, all strung up from the ceiling. The son, stated as being ‘seven years of age’ was missing and supposedly never found. An alchemist’s apprentice in the town disappeared around the same time after blabbing that ‘a demon from the Holy Land had taken the children’, saying it was connected to two massacres in the town in 1480 and 1518.”

“And the Unsub is using the same symbol?” Morgan wondered if perhaps there was more than one Unsub.

“Positive,” Garcia sighed, “The alchemist disappeared after burning down two houses in the town. The whole religious connotation makes me think we might be dealing with a cult.”

“That’s Rossi’s theory, too.” Morgan told her.

Garcia sighed. Should she mention that JJ thought something had happened at the church? No, probably not. If Morgan hadn't mentioned it, she probably hadn't told him. And frankly, Garcia could understand. If she said she was seeing ghosts, JJ would be taken off the team before you could say 'stay puft marshmallow man'. 

Morgan thanked her and placed the phone down.

Garcia looked back at the screen, sighing as she moved the mouse to get another file open. Out of the corner of her eye, something appeared to move. But when Garcia turned her head, she only saw a picture of the man from the Oswalt murders that she had seen earlier.

She was certain she had seen him move. But that wasn't possible. Was it? JJ did mention ghosts.

Garcia placed a spare shirt from her bag over the screen and carried on watching the monitor in front of her.

The deputy had tried focusing his mind. He wondered why he was so good at trying to communicate with the agents. Maybe it was because he had been to the Collins’ farmhouse shortly before he died. Maybe it was because he was the most recent prisoner who wasn’t under Bughuul’s control.

But whatever the reason, he had to get the agents out of there. Get them to destroy the reels. The farmhouse had been the final home on the deputy’s list. If the house was burnt – or at least, Courtney and Dylan called nowhere else home – then Bughuul would have no influence left anywhere in the United States.

He had tried to warn the woman, but even as he looked out the door and saw her leaning against the outside wall of the police station, holding her arms and trying to make sense of what happened in the cornfield, the deputy only saw a vulnerable human.

The deputy tried again, focusing on transporting himself to the human realm. She looked up again and the deputy managed to ask, “Your name?” It still sounded like a strangled gasp, but at least she could hear it this time.

She paused, before she answered, “JJ.”

The deputy knew he had to work fast. He hadn’t mastered this yet and Bughuul or a child might find him at any time. He needed to try.

“Burn reels,” he gasped, “Bughuul – hides in images. Paintings, recordings, he takes the kids.”

His mouth felt like it was set alight. Then he asked, pointing at her with a crumbling, grey finger, “Children?”

JJ nodded, her lips pursed. Then the deputy frowned in concentration. “Children – dead – in Bughuul’s realm. He lives – in reels.”

He couldn’t stay any more. The pain was far too much and he felt himself being pulled away, anyway. As he vanished, JJ stared at where the deputy had stood.

The possibility of ghosts was a tricky one. She had believed in them as a child. But seeing what had been the deputy appear before her eyes, then disappear just as quickly, made her wonder if there was something other than normality.

Going back inside, she sat down at the table where the reels sat in the projector. Placing in _Sleepy Time ’98_, she took a good look at what was included.

This was the reel with Christopher. She tried hard not to think about the boy who had made her feel giddy. She understood that there must have been a spell of some kind. Why else would she have felt like a pedo just thinking about the kid? Of course, Reid would probably say that as Christopher had been permanently thirteen since 1998, this wouldn’t be the same, so of course JJ wasn’t going to talk to him about this.

JJ looked again at the drawing on a cupboard door when the reel played. The deputy’s notes had mentioned that when Ellison Oswalt had watched the murder from 1966, he had seen Bughuul move and look at him. Oswalt had originally brushed it off as coincidence, but the deputy hadn’t thought so.

JJ didn’t want to imagine Oswalt’s final moments. His daughter, brainwashed into killing him. His wife and son, helpless. Looking up at her, knowing he could have saved them if he destroyed the reels…

Had Oswalt destroyed the reels? JJ looked back over the notes as she thought. The deputy – if it was him – had told her that to stop Bughuul, they had to destroy the reels. Did that include the films sent to Garcia?

As the deputy was torn back to Bughuul’s realm, he had heard complaining from another room. He heard a boy moan, “We just wanted fun!” followed by a cold silence. Then he saw Milo at his door.

The boy came in and glared at the deputy. The deputy was a little worried that Milo would do something to him; he had seen the effect the ghost had on the Collins boys.

Then Milo told the deputy, “Mr Boogie is angry with Christopher and Emma.”

The deputy blinked a few times, shifted in his seat and asked, eyebrow raised, “Why?” But he thought he already knew the answer.

“Mr Boogie says that Christopher and Emma were thinking like adults. If they do this again, Mr Boogie will destroy them, as he did with Zach.”

The deputy swallowed. Then, afraid of the answer, he asked Milo, “What did Bu – Mr Boogie do to Zach?”

“He destroyed his body,” Milo seemed a little disappointed, somehow, “I do not know what happened to Zach’s soul. I do not wish for Christopher and Emma to be sent like this.”

“And if a child already in this realm is destroyed, what happens to them?” the deputy asked.

“I have not seen this happen,” Milo answered, “but Detlef has.”

“Detlef?” the deputy asked, “The German?”

Milo nodded. “A very long time ago, an older child thought like an adult. She was fifteen years old, Detlef said. She should have been too old to come here. She spent about a hundred years in here before she used some magic to make herself appear in the human realm physically. She seduced a man, did grown-up things with him. We lost the child Mr Boogie wanted to lure. Then Mr Boogie turned her to ash and the room smelt of smoke. The room shook and a hole opened up and the ash fell down. Detlef heard her scream. I think she ended up someplace in Hell.”

The deputy shuddered. He really didn’t know what he should do. Then he realized he would rather suffer in Hell for eternity than let anyone else go through what happened to him.

He had to rescue the agents.


	5. Chapter 5

It had been forty-eight hours since the BAU had arrived in Illinois. They were getting nowhere. There had been traffic stop-and-searches going in and out of the local area, men with dogs combing the fields around the farm and questions about both the recent and 1962 massacres were all over the internet.

But the BAU didn’t even have a suspect.

JJ had what seemed to be her eighth cup of coffee and held her head in her left hand. Reid sat a few seats away, his breakfast lined up in a row on the table.

“Find anything?” she asked. He looked up, confused.

“About the symbol or the cornfield?”

“The symbol.” JJ quickly interrupted. “I watched those reels again. Looking for the symbol. It’s there all right, every single video.” The videos that she never wanted to see again.

“I found a house fire in England that seems similar to the German incident,” Reid gabbled away, “The details were sketchy, but when a family of gardeners lived in a cottage at the edge of an estate in the year 1835, the nine-year-old son was found to have been troubled. He mentioned ghosts and a man in black that never spoke. What’s interesting is that just before the cottage burnt down, one of the house servants said that a ghostly woman tried to seduce him.”

“Like in the cornfield…” JJ swallowed. Then she asked, “Are you all right? I mean, with what happened.”

“About as much as someone can be,” Reid murmured, but he wasn’t looking at JJ. Instead, he was leafing through pages on his lap.

“What happened to the family living there?” JJ asked. If she focused Reid’s mind on something else, he might be more willing to talk and be his usual, informative self.

Reid shrugged. “The old vase inside the house was smashed to pieces by said house servant. He also burnt the cottage, everyone said, but there was no firm evidence. The boy was unaffected after the fire.”

“So it seems to be images,” JJ held her hands out on the table, before looking at the reels, “Reid, don’t ask why, but we have to burn the reels.”

“Burn…them?” Reid was a little slow on the uptake, “But why?”

JJ groaned. “You saw them as much as I did. That can’t be a shared hallucination, not one that vivid.”

“Well, at Versailles in 1901 –“

“Oh, stop that, Reid! You saw the girl,” JJ was desperate, “The both of us danced. I – I hadn’t felt like that since prom. Being a child again, a child in love. That was mind control, Reid. The ghosts – oh, how can I put this without sounding pathetic? The ghosts, Emma Keighley and Christopher Miller, their families died when they were still in puberty. They – they’ve spent years trapped away in God only knows where. They – those two felt sexual attraction, possibly for the first time. I know you don’t want to think about it, Spencer Reid, but something came from beyond the veil and wanted us.”

Reid was holding the papers close to his chest like a security blanket. He only mumbled one sentence. “I felt – the same way I used to when I talked to Maeve.” The papers crumpled in his hands.

Then JJ sighed, her hands gripping the sides of her head. “If – if Bughuul lives in the reels,” she said after a while, “then we should burn them. Get rid of Garcia’s email. And the files stored on the computer.”

“But that’s destroying evidence,” Reid piped up, “What do we tell the Chief?”

“Oh, stuff the Chief!” JJ stood up, grabbing the notebook the deputy had written in, “This monster kills families, takes a child. I’m not going to risk Henry. Or Jack. Or any other child connected with the BAU.”

Meanwhile, in the room with the ham radio, Morgan was standing over it as he had a look around the back. Kate pushed against a nearby table, irritated.

“You said you knew what to do,” she groaned.

“I’m doing my best.” Morgan replied, before it sprang into life. He took a big step back, surprised.

A raspy voice came out, mixed with static. Then there came the sounds of muted screaming, followed by a girl’s voice.

“What’s that?” Kate asked, coming up.

Then they heard another voice speaking English. “It’s the kids. He takes the kids.”

Morgan raised an eyebrow, uncertain of what was happening. Stepping back, he took a look at the door, thinking someone had come in.

Someone came in, all right. 

At the BAU headquarters, Garcia looked at the notes sent over for ‘Line Three’.

The family in _Quarry Digging_, the West family, had said that in the days before they were murdered and their son Eric had disappeared, had believed their house was haunted. This titbit was placed deep in the files at the local police station, never even released to the public. The deputy must have been very careful in managing to get that piece of information.

The family in _Steam Bath_, the Belangers, hadn’t reported anything like that, although the missing child, Craig Belanger, had recently gone for therapy because he was detached from everyone. It was the same with the _Road Trip_ family; Rebecca Anderson was said to have isolated herself from her family.

As Garcia wondered whether the Unsub – human or otherwise – could have picked up on the children’s misery, the lights in the room flickered. Looking up, she found herself drawn to the video she had been watching.

_Happy Birthday ’84_, with the Hightower family in Elko, had featured a family celebrating their daughter’s sixteenth. That had been before they were placed on the bouncy castle (who had a bouncy castle at a sweet sixteen?) and it was set alight and twelve-year-old Mark was kidnapped. But when Garcia looked back, she swore that when she viewed this before, the figure in the black clothes hadn’t been looking directly at her.

As the lights went off, she saw, to her utter horror, the creature move closer, even though the video was paused.

Garcia pushed back from her chair and ran to the door. But before she could get there, the lights turned back on and the video was as it was. Her heart was pounding in her chest and she wondered what had happened.

Then her headset crackled. She was about to rip it off when she heard something that haunted her as much as the creature in the videos.

“Baby girl…baby girl…?”

It was Morgan, faint and terrified.

“Morgan?” she found herself saying, her voice raspy and afraid. Her trembling hand touched the headset as she desperately willed him to say more.

“Baby girl…” it was fainter than ever, “help me…”

Then ear-piercing static played. Tearing it off and flinging it as far as she could, Garcia’s hands grabbed the door behind her, before she slumped to the ground and let herself weep.

The deputy had been forced to watch another video. This one, _Nature Trip ’14_, featured five-year-old Kylie Lane’s family being tied to trees in New Hampshire while being bled dry by sap equipment. Kylie herself, a small girl with curly blonde hair and in pajamas and a cagoule, snatched the video back as it ended, walking out the room.

At that instant, the deputy heard faint screaming. Of course, he was used to screaming from the other tortured prisoners here. But this one was different.

Then he was suddenly sitting somewhere else. He was in the church, but at the same time, not in the church. He could see two of the agents, the older woman and the bald, black man, being held down on pews by Bughuul’s children from ‘Line Two’. Milo and Peter were pinning the man’s arms and legs down, while Catherine and Ted did exactly the same with the woman. Emma wasn’t here, but given her interest with the young male agent, this did not surprise the deputy in the least.

Usually, the grown adults would have been able to overpower a group of children, but whatever Bughuul did to make the children strong he was using here. The man and woman were struggling against the ghost children, barely registering exactly where they were.

Horrified, the deputy began yelling, “Let them go!” Struggling against his chains, the deputy’s eyes locked with the man. “Don’t worry; I’ll do what I can!” he faintly shouted. If the man could hear him, he did not reply.

Then Ashley walked out of the shadows. Slowly, she made her way between the two agents and sat down, cross-legged. She glared at the deputy, before a small smile appeared on her face.

“They’ll leave this place, certainly,” she smirked, “When they’ve been tortured enough, Mr Boogie will release them back home. Then they will die from their wounds.”

The deputy now knew for certain that there was nothing of the little girl who loved painting left in that ghostly form.

“How will you torture them?” he managed to say in a raspy whisper.

Two more children appeared from the shadows, one on either side of Ashley. One was a girl in bright pink winter gear and the other was an older girl in a dark green swimsuit. Sarah Field and Laura Priestley; _Ski Trip_ and _Swimming Pool_.

The deputy had seen the movies. He knew what they had done to their families.

He didn’t know if it was Bughuul’s magic or his own terror. But all the same, the deputy couldn’t draw himself away from the two girls as they re-enacted their murders.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry if I'm a little late. I've been very tired lately and I had a bit of writer's block with this story. But I know how I want it to end up, so I just have to get it there.

“Team, we have a big problem,” Hotch came into the room where Reid and JJ sat, “What are you doing?”

Reid and JJ had opened the reels in ‘Line One’ and had begun tearing them out. Hotch stared in disbelief as his two agents seemed to rip the film apart like children.

“Hotch, I know this looks bad –“ JJ began, but he interrupted her.

“You had better have a good explanation for this, Agent Jareau!” Hotch raised his voice, “I have Morgan and Callahan missing and now my team are ruining evidence!”

“Morgan and Kate are missing?” Reid looked up from cutting _Lawn Work ’86_ into pieces.

“Yes.” Hotch crossed his arms, furious. JJ wondered whether he used that same face when Jack had been bad. Probably. “I’ll speak to you about this later. For now, you two need to go with Rossi and me to the farmhouse.”

At the church in Bughuul’s realm, Ashley sat on the floor in front of the deputy, mildly amused by the scene in front of her. Laura pulled Kate’s head out from the bucket of water for the fourth time and asked, “Another go?”

“Sure,” Ashley replied.

Kate begged for Laura to stop, but the girl dunked her victim’s head again.

Morgan was suffering just as much. Sarah had fun picking up splintered bits of sled and beating him over the body with them.

Of course, this was just their entertainment. They would really have fun when the rest of the team came by.

Out of the corner of his eye, the deputy saw Detlef on his chair, his back to the scene that was going on. The alchemist was trying to hold himself together. Then the deputy heard him saying something under his breath.

As the deputy strained his ears to listen, he found that he had somehow moved. He was now sitting right next to Detlef. The man looked up and said one word to the deputy.

“_Konentrieren._”

The deputy knew enough German to know that the man meant for him to concentrate, (he still wished he had taken German instead of Spanish) but he had no idea on what.

The alchemist gave a smile for what must have been the first time in five hundred years. “_Heimat._” He whispered.

Home? What did he mean by that? Then the deputy realized Detlef meant the human realm.

But the deputy had been trying for what seemed like forever – whether it was just the torture or Bughuul’s warped passage of time, he had no clue – to get back into the human realm. He shook his head, trying to show that he didn’t understand, but Detlef slowly unfurled his fingers. A small cloth bag was hidden in his palm. He must have stolen it last time he was in the laboratory. Whenever that had been.

The alchemist tipped the bag upside down and some light green powder fell out. As soon as it did, all of the children tormenting the agents turned their heads in unison and instantly stood beside the two men.

However, Detlef had pressed his foot down on the powder and he disappeared in front of them all.

Even though the deputy hadn’t seen him come in, he knew that Bughuul was standing behind him.

“Do it!” he shouted, “Just do it! Nowhere can be worse than this!”

But although Bughuul placed a cold, icy hand on the deputy’s shoulder, he did not turn him into dust as he had done with Zach. Rather, he froze the deputy’s body completely. The man was completely immobile and he was forced to watch what took place in front of him.

Glancing at the BAU agents, his only thought was regret that he could not help them.

When Hotch entered the church, leaving Rossi to give a stern talking to his younger agents, he felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.

As he walked further into the room, closer and closer to where the 1962 victims had been murdered, he heard a voice shouting.

Morgan. He was in pain, Hotch could tell.

“Morgan?” he asked, his hand reaching for his gun, “You here?”

But there was no reply. Instead, as he creaked open a door to enter the hallway, he saw a child standing in front of him.

Hotch asked, “What are you doing here?” The girl looked no more than seven years old, wearing a white nightdress.

“You should not have tried to come here,” the girl spoke in a raspy voice, “You will never see your partners again.”

Hotch knew that he had seen the girl before. Then it clicked. She was Ellison Oswalt’s missing daughter. “Ashley?” he asked, kneeling down to talk to her at her level, “where is the man who took you? It’s OK; there’s no need to be frightened any more. I’m Agent Hotchner with the FBI.”

Ashley smiled. “I think there is plenty of reason to be frightened, Hotch.”

Hotch was about to ask how she knew his name when the room felt colder. For a split second, he saw Morgan curled up on the ground, pleading for whoever was hurting him to stop. Kate was lying on the floor by a tin bucket filled with water. Her head and shoulders were soaking wet.

Hotch ran over to Morgan, getting down to his knees and asking, pleading, “Morgan? Hey, Morgan, what’s wrong?”

All Morgan could do was lie there like a fish caught on the sand. He could barely register that Hotch was in front of him.

Then Hotch stood up, looking around for whoever had done this.

Looking into the face of Bughuul standing right behind him, Hotch felt a horror that he hadn’t experienced since the night Haley was killed.

Part of him screamed inside to get Morgan and Kate out of there. But the rational side of his brain argued that he could get help. Hotch ran out of the church doors, hoping he had made the right decision.

“Call the station!” he shouted, almost tripping over as he ran as if the devil was on his heels. Which you could say was what was going on, to be frank.

Rossi rolled the window down as he called, “Hotch? What’s the matter?”

As Hotch approached, he found he didn’t have words for what he had seen. How could Morgan and Kate have appeared out of nowhere without a sound? How had the creature snuck up on him without Hotch hearing anything?

Then Rossi’s eyes grew wide and he pointed behind Hotch. The agent turned around and saw a man standing some feet away, eyes sunken and dead-looking, wearing only an old-fashioned nightgown.

“What’s that?” Rossi asked, bewildered, “It came out of nowhere!”

JJ and Reid exited the vehicle. JJ walked up to the man, gingerly. “Deputy?” she asked. She wasn’t sure it was him, but the man had appeared in the same way as the Deputy.

Detlef shook his head. _“Nein,”_ he replied, _“Hilfe.”_

“Help?” Reid asked, coming up as well.

“What’s going on?” Hotch demanded, doing his best not to let his voice shake.

JJ answered him without looking back. “Our Unsub is not human, Hotch. He’s been taking the kids for millennia. And he took the deputy as well.”

Reid finished for her, also staring at the alchemist, “And if we don’t stop him, we’re next.”


	7. Chapter 7

The deputy stared at the open church door. From beyond that door, he could just about see, was the entrance to the human realm. Detlef was already there, talking to the FBI agents.

The deputy knew that he didn’t have much time. Nor did the agents on the floor; the man was hunched over in pain and the woman was soaking wet after yet another dunking from Laura Priestley.

Bughuul had gone, but the deputy still felt the same coldness around him as when Bughuul was close. The deputy wondered if, when the reels were destroyed, he would be trapped in this dimension.

Better than anyone else being held here, he supposed.

Hotch and Rossi stood in amazement as JJ and Reid began to explain all. Rossi now could see what had been going on at the cornfield, but Hotch just blinked a few times, trying to make sense of everything.

When they were done, Hotch held a hand out and asked, “So our Unsub – is a Babylonian god?”

“We said that.” Reid answered, not quite understanding why his superior wanted him to repeat himself.

“Right,” Hotch took a deep breath, “and – that guy?” He pointed at Detlef.

“Remember how Garcia said there was a German alchemist in the 1530s who disappeared after a massacre? I think he’s been in the other realm or dimension or whatnot ever since,” Reid replied.

“My God.” Rossi managed to say.

Reid turned around and asked Detlef, _“Sag mir, was du weisst.”_ The alchemist rubbed his grey hands for a moment, before Reid tried again. _“Wie stoppen wir den Gott?”_ He was speaking slowly and carefully, making sure that the alchemist was comfortable above everything else.

Detlef spoke and Reid began to translate.

“He says ‘he is here in icons and literature. If a home has his…drawing, then the family are chosen.’ At least, I think that’s what he’s saying; the words are nearly five hundred years old.”

Then Rossi asked, “And what about the children from the cornfield?”

Reid tried his best to ask Detlef, who nodded sadly. _“Emma und Christopher…”_

“Emma and Christopher…” Reid repeated for the team, although they really didn’t need a translation for that part.

_“…benutze Magie…”_

“…used magic…”

_“…um den weiblichen Wachtmeister zu locken…”_

“…to lure the female constable…” Reid squinted as he concentrated. JJ looked slightly embarrassed.

_“…Und den Eunuchen.”_ Detlef pointed at Reid.

“…and the eunuch…” Reid trailed off. Then he blushed. Hotch tried to stop himself from snorting.

“The what?” JJ raised an eyebrow.

“Eunuch,” Hotch explained, “men who were castrated.” JJ placed her fingers to her mouth, lightly chuckling.

“They were often used as court scribes or government officials in Eastern countries,” Reid gabbled quickly, avoiding his team’s gaze, then turned back to Detlef, _“Was planten sie?”_

Detlef glanced about, before pointing at Reid’s gun.

“The gun?” the agent asked. Detlef nodded his head earnestly, then opened his mouth and pointed inside.

A collective shiver ran down the agents’ spines. _“Killen?”_ Reid asked him.

_“Ja und nein,”_ Detlef held a hand over his chin as he tried to find an answer,_ “Proserpina?”_ he eventually decided.

Reid took a quick look at his team. “I think the best I can gather is that Emma and Christopher were attracted to me and JJ and wanted us to stay with them.”

“That might be so,” Hotch put his hand out to try and calm everybody down, as he tried to wrap his head about the fact that ghosts, demons and magic existed, “but how do we rescue Morgan and Kate?”

Detlef looked back at the church door, anxious. Then Reid told his team, “I know we have to burn the reels. The ham radio, too. Everything with Bughuul’s icons on.”

“That’s a lot of stuff,” Hotch folded his arms and looked down at the ground in thought, “Garcia called me and said that Morgan called through her earpiece. She might need to burn that too.”

“And all of the video files we sent her,” Reid let his arms swing by his sides as he spoke, “and the files and email we sent her on the station’s computer. But I’m concerned about how this leaves the case open.”

“We can worry about the Chief later,” Hotch instructed, “For now, Reid and JJ can go with – him – to the station. Rossi and I can help rescue Morgan and Kate.”

“But how do we get back to the station in time?” JJ asked, “It’s at least a twenty minute drive and I don’t know how much longer Morgan and Kate can last.”

Detlef had been listening and although he had no clue what any of them were saying, he knew that they were desperate. Pointing back at the church door, he shouted out the word, _“Lauf.”_

“Run?” Reid turned his head. “Run where?”

_“Tür zum anderen Ort.”_

“Door to the other place?” Reid frowned. Then he walked slowly towards the church door. He couldn’t see anyone inside the church, although if they looked out, they would have seen him. Remembering the layout of the church, he knew there was a hallway next to the main room. “I think he’s trying to say that since the reels are currently at the police station, if we go through a door inside the church, we’ll end up back at the station.”

“We need to move fast, then,” Hotch nodded as he started walking briskly towards the church door, “before who knows what comes up.”

Entering the church, the four of them noticed how cold it was. Not to mention how dark.

Rossi, Reid and JJ all froze when they saw Morgan and Kate on the floor, both on their sides. If it wasn’t for faint groaning sounds, they’d have thought the two agents were dead.

Three more children had come out to play their twisted games. Reid could identify them easily; he’d seen their faces in their files. Caitlin Boone, _Bungee Jumping_ girl, was kneeling beside Morgan’s head, twisting a bungee rope in her tiny hands. Adam Van Dyke, _Ice Skating_ boy, still in his winter overcoat, was holding a pair of skates by his side, the sharp end pointing upwards, examining Kate as if trying to work out where to slice. Philip Lyon, _Target Practice_ boy, forever five years old, was loading a shotgun under his arms.

None of them seemed to have noticed the agents. Or if they did, they didn’t care. Just more victims to attack.

“Move!” Hotch hissed at his team and they ran towards the door.

In unison, the children turned their heads and looked at where the four had gone. Five, if you included Detlef. But none of the children did. They never really noticed him.

Finding themselves at the station again, Reid turned around to see exactly where they had come from. Rather than a doorway, as expected, they had come out of a projection showing the church hallway. Looking at the projector itself, which was already playing, he saw that none of the reels were actually inside.

“Right,” Hotch clasped his hands and looked from one agent to the next as he gave his instructions, “Reid, JJ, stay here. Rossi and I will get the others. Call Garcia and have her destroy the evidence.”

“Shouldn’t you have more help?” JJ asked, confused.

Hotch shook his head as he moved back to the projection. “It’s better to have some of us this side. What happens if the reels are all destroyed?”

Reid glanced over at Detlef and repeated the sentence in German. Detlef gave a quick answer and Reid frowned, concerned.

“He isn’t sure.”

Then Detlef spoke again, pointing at both the reels in the box and the screen. Reid translated for the others.

“If they are truly gone, he thinks the child will then be powerless.” Detlef said more, Reid translating as best he could. “But only when the last reel is gone…when the radio is smashed…when the drawings are burnt…when the images are all destroyed…Bughuul will be no more.”

“No more?” Rossi asked, “But he’s a four-thousand-year-old god!”

“I think Detlef means that Bughuul won’t be able to come after us if we block off all the entrances he has here, in America. Think of it like blocking underground tunnels; if all are sealed off, there’s no way out.”

“It’s the best we’ve got,” Hotch murmured, and as he walked to the screen, he and Rossi faced the other two agents, “When we go through, turn off the reel and burn it to ash. That’s an order.”

“Yes, Hotch.” both agents replied.

Hotch nodded, his heart beating in his chest. He made his way back through the screen. Rossi did the same and Reid went over to turn it off.

“Let’s get going,” JJ placed all of the reels into the box and turned her phone on to call Garcia.

Detlef looked over at Reid and came up to him. Reid was about to say that he didn’t think the decaying ghost would be able to do anything with the reels when the man pressed a glowing right thumb between the agent’s eyes.

Suddenly Reid could see maps. Maps with lines intersecting all over. Germany, England, France, Norway…addresses where the Babylonian pottery was locked away or undiscovered. There were even lines scattered over the former Soviet Bloc, Russia and Canada. There was one line dotting through Iraq, Syria and Turkey, which Reid suspected might be the hardest to go and break given the current political climate.

When the alchemist had removed his finger, Reid saw his stern, saddened face beneath all that grey skin. Reid then asked a question.

_“You want me to get rid of all those icons?”_

_“Yes. I – I do not know how easy it will be to travel. The world must be very different from my day.”_

_“I am sorry that you ended up there. I cannot imagine what it must have been like.”_

_“The god has trapped seven hundred souls over the four millennia. They are still trapped in their homelands. Hinrich – I went to save him when I uncovered the truth. The girl, the one that haunts Deputy, he looks upon her the way I saw Hinrich. With great sadness.”_

Reid paused, as JJ placed the projector and ham radio into two more boxes and started to carry the reels out to the grounds beyond.

He asked, _“Are you going back into the other realm?”_

Detlef stood tall and firm, eyes locked with Reid’s._ “I need to do something after five hundred years. It is best to go by saving others.”_

The alchemist flickered and then he was gone.

Hotch looked at the children standing in the center of the church. He knew that they could hurt him, which unnerved him no end, but that if Bughuul came in, Hotch was definitely doomed.

He saw the children from every reel had started to appear in this room, all staring at them. Maybe they sensed that the reels were about to be burnt. But none of them made a move. None of them attempted to stop Hotch and Rossi from rescuing the almost lifeless agents on the floor.

Perhaps they were waiting for Bughuul. Perhaps they wanted the four of them to get away. Who knew?

As Hotch and Rossi kept their eyes on the children, Ashley turned around and walked over to where the deputy was sitting. Pulling the chains away as if they were silly string, she glared up at the man.

“What –“ he began, but she turned on her heel and went back to the group, standing beside Stephanie. Maybe she wanted him to be hurt by Bughuul when he finally appeared, if the deputy was free. Whatever the answer, she wasn’t telling him.

Lifting Morgan’s arm up over his shoulder, Hotch looked back at where he and Rossi had come in. “Get out of here!” Hotch shouted at the children as they started to walk closer.

One by one, the children stopped in their tracks, almost frozen. Hotch realized what had happened; JJ and Reid must have destroyed that child’s reel.

Then the room suddenly grew darker and much, much colder, if such a thing were possible. Although Hotch and Rossi didn’t see Bughuul, they knew he was here. The darkness slowly consumed the children, although Hotch could still see the outlines standing.

The deputy’s form flickered as he stood by the church door. “Here!” he shouted.

As the four agents made their way over to the doors, the deputy, even paler than before, spoke in a very tired voice. “Detlef – and I – can only hold the door open for so long. Get out – get out of here – while you can.”

“What about you?” Rossi asked, trying to hold Kate aloft, “You need to escape, don’t you?”

The deputy shook his head, a small smile appearing on his face for a second. “I can never go back. I – leave now.”

Rossi raced through the door with Kate as Hotch stopped for a moment, even though he could feel, mainly due to the cold and the darkness surrounding the room, before asking the deputy a question.

“My son – will this follow me?”

The deputy shook his head. “Doubt it,” he replied, shaking his head.

Hotch stood firm and tall, nodding his head in a farewell. The deputy did the same, at least as much as he could.

Once Hotch was out of the door and back in the human realm, the deputy turned his attention to Bughuul. The deity was inches away, his arm out ready to turn the deputy to dust. Very few of the children were left standing; Milo, Ashley and Matilda. All three moved out of the way to let their father take revenge.

The deputy opened his clenched fist as he moved to the open doorway, his other, shaking hand still grabbing the door handle. A bright light floated in his palm. Bughuul stopped where he was, looking with curiosity at the light.

Ashley’s eyes widened and she started to yell.

“Get back!”

She darted away into the darkness, grabbing Matilda’s hand and pulling the older girl behind her. Milo stood where he was for a second.

“Father? Are you certain –“ he started to ask, but then he gulped. “Yes, Bughuul.” He answered with sadness as he walked back to the darkness. Ashley’s hand came out for a split second before Milo took it and entered.

The deputy looked to his left, where Detlef had appeared. He nodded at the deputy to indicate the reels and projector were burnt. The deputy felt a surge of energy inside, one that he had not felt in what had seemed like eternity, and as Detlef opened out his palm and let a wave of yellow dust seep into the darkness, encircling the children, the deputy blew on the light in his hand.

When Hotch and Rossi were several feet from the church, they heard a loud explosion behind them. They looked behind them and saw the church was completely aflame, the roof falling in and the doors fallen off.

“I think it’s over.” Hotch muttered.

“Milo? Milo?”  
“Ashley?”  
“Why is everyone standing by those guys in tunics?”  
“Everyone?”  
“All of the kids, we’re in a queue. It’s moving rather fast; I think those are gold scales at the end – Milo, I think this is paradise.”  
“Paradise? I don’t think paradise has a guy with a crocodile head by giant scales with a feather on.”  
“Where’s Bughuul?”  
“He’s gone."  
"We won’t worry about him again.”  
“Hope so, Ashley. I do hope so. It’s – it’s as if I find him repulsive. I think it’s because we’ve left him, but I feel completely different.”  
“The kids are going in – it’ll be our turn soon. See? Kenneth’s gone past the scales. And Christopher and Adam and Matilda and Stephanie and –“  
“I get it, Ashley! But some of them are going the other way, into the bright flames. I – Ashley, I don’t want to go there.”  
“Why?”  
“I’m a minister’s kid, remember? I know what that is!”  
“Milo, it’s our turn. At last. Look, the feather’s heavier than – me, I guess.”  
“Ashley, if I don’t turn up, just go on ahead.”  
“Yes, Milo.”

Outside the station, Hotch and Rossi arrived in the squad car as the bonfires from large flowerpots sent smoke everywhere.

“You’re back!” JJ couldn’t help but cry loudly when they came up. The corners of Reid’s mouth twitched, but he didn’t say anything.

“Morgan and Kate seem OK,” Rossi told them as he got out, “None of the local officers asked about you burning evidence in their garden?”

Reid looked around him, at the soil that had been tipped out of said flowerpots and gave out a small laugh. “No. They’re still out questioning people about the Collins case.”

“This is going to be difficult,” Morgan had regained some idea of where he was and had started talking again, albeit barely, “How do we explain this?”

“Break-in,” Reid suggested, “Misplaced evidence. There’s dozens of ways to lose the reels. Garcia triple-checked that everything was gone. Even burnt her earpiece in the training grounds. Said she’d rather have the worst of our Unsubs than watch that again.”

“We have to say that it’s gone soon enough,” Hotch told the team, “But we should get the jet ready.”

The file would be open forever, the six of them knew that for certain. But if the images were gone, the threat of Bughuul no longer loomed over them.

**21 Months Later**

The nights in prison were the worst.

The sounds of prisoners shouting, rattling the bars or throwing things greatly disturbed Reid. But he could barely move enough to grab onto his pillow; his body ached all over from the vicious beating.

Then he tried squeezing his eyes shut. All he could see were the prisoners attacking him.

He wanted to get out of here. He wanted to go home.

“I can make the pain go away.”

Reid slowly opened his eyes and saw a girl standing beside the bunk. Emma…

“We burnt the reels,” he managed to say, “In the bonfire.”

“I know,” Emma knelt down on the floor so she was directly in front of his face, “You’re stuck, Reid. Your team might not get you out. You could face life in prison. Suffer every day for the rest of your life.” She held out her hand onto the bed, palm facing upwards.

“Or you could come with me.” Her wide, unblinking eyes stared back at him. She lifted up a reel with Christmas written on the front onto his bunk. Reid looked up and saw a white screen on the wall of his cell, heard the sound of a projector rolling. “Bughuul can’t hurt us any more.”

Reid gave out an exhausted sigh. “Emma…I believe in my team. They’ll do something. They’re – we’re like you and the other kids. We look out for each other and they’ll never stop until I’m back with them. In a bizarre, demented way, we’re family.”

Emma’s eyes looked downwards, upset. She slowly leaned over him and whispered in his ear.

“I know.”

Spencer Reid watched as Emma turned around and walked into the bright light. If he was right, Reid swore he had seen the deputy standing with her as he took her hand.

Later Reid would admit to JJ what he had seen. He had no clue if he was actually dreaming or not. But whatever he had seen, he couldn’t help but hope the children and deputy were in a better place.


End file.
